s freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one
I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a
musician for all I know." And inflamed at the thought of this
possibility--I remembered the piano, you see--I gave to the winds all my
fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all,
whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some
men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr.
Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit
the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such
attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young
girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her
where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and
see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable
evening.

Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed
against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly
opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business
agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. "The
heavens smile upon my enterprise," thought I, and waited for the man to
come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted
to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for
it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or
gossip.

You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was
somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you
must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually
keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a
spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the
love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.

To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on
that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his
daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the
transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation,
gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and
sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour
at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.

Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own
hands in carrying a piano up